Tag: environment

Why cancer is hitting the Midwest harder than anywhere else in America

While the rest of the country’s cancer rates are falling, those in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and Kansas — known as the Corn Belt — are rising at an alarming rate, data shows.

The spike in America’s corn-producing states caught the attention of the University of Iowa’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, which gathered a panel to investigate the trend. 

One of the experts, Dr. Marian Neuhouser, a professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, served on the panel as an expert in nutrition and obesity.

“The panel came about after they noticed that the trends for cancer incidence were increasing at a faster rate in Iowa than in other states,” Neuhouser told Fox News Digital.

A data analysis by The Washington Post based on federal health datasets found that the number of people diagnosed with cancer in the six Corn Belt states has outpaced the national average since the mid-2010s. 

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Israel’s Untold Environmental Genocide

On September 23rd, the UN published a little-noticed report highlighting a barely-acknowledged facet of the 21st century Holocaust in Gaza. Namely, the Zionist entity’s genocide is wreaking a devastating environmental toll not merely on occupied Palestine, but West Asia more widely – including Israel. The damage is incalculable, with air, food sources, soil, and water widely polluted, to a fatal extent. Recovery may take decades, if at all. In the meantime, Gaza’s remaining population will suffer the cost – in many cases, with their lives.

In June 2024, the UN issued a preliminary assessment on the Gaza genocide’s “environmental impact”. It found the Zionist entity’s barbarous aggression had “exerted a profound impact” on “people in Gaza and the natural systems on which they depend.” Due to “security constraints” – namely, Israel’s continuing assault – the UN was unable “to assess the full extent of environment [sic] damage.” Nonetheless, the body was able to collate information indicating “the scale of degradation is immense,” and has “worsened significantly” since October 7th.

For example, Tel Aviv’s 21st century Holocaust has “significantly degraded water infrastructure leading to severely limited, low-quality water supply to the population.” The UN finds this “is contributing to numerous adverse health outcomes, including a continuous surge in infectious diseases.” Groundwater contamination is rampant, with catastrophic implications “for environmental and human health.” None of Gaza’s wastewater treatment facilities are operational, while “heavy destruction of piped systems, and increasing use of cesspits for sanitation, have increased contamination of the aquifer, marine and coastal areas.”

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Foreign Billionaire Pours Millions Into U.S. Politics to Push Radical Green Agenda

For more than a decade, British billionaire hedge-fund manager Christopher Hohn has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into American politics. 

Federal law strictly prohibits foreign nationals from directly or indirectly influencing U.S. elections, yet Hohn has become one of the most aggressive violators of that rule.

Through his London-based nonprofit, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Hohn poured more than $553 million into U.S. organizations between 2014 and 2023. 

These dollars didn’t go toward charity; instead, they went toward advancing radical left-wing policy campaigns: climate protests, anti-fossil-fuel litigation, and efforts to ban natural gas stoves. 

Much of this money flowed through the Arabella Advisors dark-money network, which bankrolls progressive activism nationwide.

CIFF’s ties raise even deeper concerns. The group has close connections to Communist China. 

Its CEO sits on the International Green Development Coalition, a program tied to China’s Belt and Road initiative. 

The coalition’s work is overseen by top officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

In fact, Hohn’s foundation has even honored CCP figures with “Friendship Awards,” further signaling its alignment with Beijing’s agenda.

While Democrats in Washington turn a blind eye, a foreign billionaire with ties to the CCP has been allowed to bankroll groups that shape America’s energy policy. 

By funding climate litigation and pressure campaigns, Hohn’s foundation has worked to dismantle U.S. energy independence, leaving America weaker and more reliant on foreign adversaries.

Democrats rail against supposed “foreign interference” in U.S. elections, but they have no problem cashing checks from foreign billionaires who bankroll their policy goals. 

From California to Washington, D.C., progressive nonprofits fueled by CIFF money have radicalized debates on climate and social justice, all while operating under the radar with little oversight or regulation.

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REVEALED: Undercover spy who infiltrated Swampy’s Newbury Pass eco-warriors is unmasked as paedophile who tried to have sex with children as young as six

The undercover spy who thwarted eco-warriors behind the Newbury Pass protest of the 1990s has been convicted of trying to have sex with children as young as six.

Special Branch hired a freelance agent to infiltrate a group of activists living in tunnels under the construction site and provide vital intelligence which allowed police to stealthily snatch them from the burrows.

For 30 years his identity has remained a secret.

But the Mail can unmask the spy as Edward Gratwick, who was yesterday convicted of 38 child sex offences.

The 68-year-old was arrested at Stansted Airport on March 7 while attempting to fly to Bucharest to sexually abuse a Romanian schoolgirl after making an arrangement with the child’s mother.

National Crime Agency officers swooped on the airport after receiving intelligence from foreign authorities just a few hours previously. Three children have now been safeguarded, the agency said.

Gratwick had discussed plans to abuse children in the UK and abroad with multiple individuals, some of whom were parents offering their daughters for sex.

He spoke with other paedophiles via encrypted messaging apps, offering to help supply with them children in exchange for money.

In these conversations, he boasted of having sex with a nine-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic.

Gratwick’s passport showed he travelled extensively around the world including to Sierra Leone, the Dominican Republic, Morrocco, around Europe, and the USA.

Investigators said they were investigating whether he had indeed already abused children abroad as he claimed.

Wayne Johns, head of child sexual abuse investigations at the NCA, said Gratwick’s chatlogs were the most depraved that his team of seasoned child abuse detectives had ever witnessed.

‘A dedicated team very experienced in their field had to examine these messages and for them to point out how horrendous they are is testament to the level of offending,’ he added.

When police searched Gratwick’s home in Mitcham, south London, they found 69ml of ‘date rape’ drug GBL, which is a central nervous system depressant, in a drawer of his fridge.

In messages he had discussed drugging children so they would not remember the abuse they suffered.

Detectives also discovered 1,364 indecent images of children on his devices.

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‘Human Composting’ Now Legal In New Jersey

Governor Phil Murphy (D) signed a bill into law on September 11 legalizing “natural organic reduction,” better known as human composting.

The legislation “[a]llows for natural organic reduction and controlled supervised decomposition of human remains.”

The Garden State is now the 14th state to sanction the controlled decomposition of human bodies into soil.

Proponents of the bill justify the macabre practice because the state is “running out of space.”

“They explained it to me and I was like—OK, the most important takeaway is it gives everybody another dignified avenue to take of their loved one’s remains,” said Hudson County Assemblyman Julio Marenco, who championed the bill.

“In New Jersey, we are one of the biggest markets available to them. And also because we’re so densely populated, a state that is running out of space.”

Governor Murphy’s office said that “by establishing regulated and supervised processes, human remains composting provides New Jersey families a respective and environmentally conscious end-of-life option.”

Turning Bodies Into Dirt

The process is as eerie as it sounds: a human corpse placed in a steel vessel, covered with straw, wood chips, or alfalfa, and sealed inside while warm air circulates.

Over the next 45 to 60 days, the body decomposes into a pile of what promoters call “nutrient-rich soil.”

Families can then choose whether to scatter it like ashes, dump it in a garden, or use it to feed a houseplant.

This isn’t metaphor.

This is literally grinding down the human body until it’s indistinguishable from fertilizer.

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Environmental Groups Are Suing To Silence Scientists Who Wrote a Report Questioning Climate Change Alarmism

In July, the Energy Department released a report challenging many of the mainstream narratives surrounding climate change. The report, which was authored by the Climate Working Group (CWG)—a team of five climate scientists and economists—was drafted to “encourage a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy,” according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright. 

“To correct course, we need open, respectful, and informed debate. That’s why I’m inviting public comment on this report,” the energy secretary wrote in the report’s foreword. The publication has indeed opened up debate, garnering nearly 60,000 comments in the Federal Register. But it has also introduced a series of legal challenges against the agency and the CWG. 

On Thursday, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts heard arguments in a lawsuit filed by two environmental groups—the Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists—against the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the CWG. 

The lawsuit argues that when forming the CWG, Wright and the Energy Department violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires federal advisory groups to provide meeting notices and meeting notes to the public, create an approved charter of the group’s mission, and “have a balanced membership in terms of ‘the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee,'” according to the the Congressional Research Service. 

Much of the lawsuit focuses on the viewpoint balance of the CWG, with the plaintiffs arguing that “all five authors are well known for holding ‘contrarian views on climate science that are out of step with the mainstream'” and “none of the members represents the consensus view among climate scientists that human activities…have unequivocally caused global warming.” To remedy the lawsuit, the environmental groups are demanding that the working group be disbanded, the report be vacated, and CWG members be prohibited from advising federal agencies until the defendants “comply with all requirements for the group to operate legally as an advisory committee.”

The Energy Department has refuted claims that it violated the FACA, arguing that the CWG is not an advisory group under the law because it was created to “exchange facts or information” with the Energy Department, not to “make recommendations on an identified governmental policy for which specified advice was being sought.” Additionally, the CWG was disbanded on September 3, in a letter sent from Wright to the group’s members, rendering “most of Plaintiffs’ claims…moot due to the CWG’s dissolution.” Even with the CWG officially being shut down, its members will continue to collaborate (outside of the federal government’s scope) and update the report, according to Bloomberg.

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Funding for green groups soared after 2009 endangerment finding, nonprofit finds

Changes to the Environmental Protection Agency’s strict regulations on the automobile industry could cost nonprofit groups that reported a 267% funding bump in the years since the federal agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, a rule that provided a legal basis for the agency to regulate vehicle emissions and the energy industry through the Clean Air Act.

Democracy Restored, a nonprofit dedicated to showing how government works, reviewed the tax returns of more than 75 of the top nonprofit organizations focused on climate change. Funding for those 75 groups has increased significantly since 2009 with their bottom lines moving from about $3 billion to $8 billion, since the most recently available tax returns were made public, said Houston Keene, director of Democracy Restored.

Government grants to those same 75 organizations increased from $350 million in 2009 to nearly $1.4 billion in 2023, the most recent year for which records were available.

“The endangerment finding seems to have given a very big boost to these groups,” Keene told The Center Square.

In July, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to rescind an Obama-era environmental finding, or endangerment finding, impacting the automobile industry. Trump’s EPA boss, Lee Zeldin, says the endangerment finding cost the industry $1 trillion in regulations. Trump’s EPA blames the 2009 Endangerment Finding for the Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandate, which aimed to reduce the production of gas-powered vehicles.

Zeldin’s EPA says that if the proposal is finalized, it will lead to the repeal of all “resulting greenhouse gas emissions regulations for motor vehicles and engines,” resulting in consumer choice and affordability. The agency says that it will save over $54 billion a year.

In support of the proposal, the EPA cited new scientific data it says challenges “the assumptions behind the 2009 Endangerment Finding.” The EPA chief contends the Obama and Biden administrations used “warped science” to cram through new emission standards.

Other groups disagree. Former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore says the move ignores reality.

Keene said the groups are pushing policies out of touch with Americans.

“They’re pushing policies that the majority of Americans wouldn’t want to live under or even agree with at this point,” he told The Center Square.

Keene said that such spending needs to be carefully examined going forward.

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Protest as 200-year-old oak trees face chop to save house built in 1980s… with villagers accusing insurance giant of ‘eco-terrorism’

Planted in George III’s reign, the three oaks have stood side by side for more than two centuries.

But now two of the trio – known as the Billingshurst Sisters – could be felled over claims they have damaged a nearby house built in the 1980s.

Insurance giant AXA said their roots have caused cracks and subsidence in the home in the West Sussex village and that the 90ft-high trees must be axed.

The firm has overturned a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) and has sought permission to chop them down from the landowner, Billingshurst Parish Council.

However, furious villagers branded the move ‘eco-terrorism’ and urged the council to oppose the application. Their fate will be decided at a meeting tomorrow.

Campaigners accuse AXA of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut – and failing to properly investigate the subsidence.

They say that shallow foundations or other factors may instead be to blame. More than 2,500 villagers have now signed a petition to save the oaks.

Gabi Barrett, who launched the petition, said the trees are ‘vital to the community’s ecosystem’.

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Dealing With the Microplastics Silent Invasion

We’re living in an era where we have never been so heavily subjected to toxicity, coming from so many different sources. The extent to which these toxicities are capable of assaulting our bodies and their ubiquitous nature means that we can never be completely free from their effects. 

However, there are ways in which we can protect ourself to minimize their effects. For a list of unprecedented health threats and how we can protect ourselves go here.

Another nasty to include in the list of toxicities is microplastics. 

They have been detected in the remotest areas of the world: The Arctic, Antarctic, deepest oceans and other isolated environments, such as, for example, in the glaciers, snow-covered mountainous areas, rivers making up the Gela Dandong Peak in China, untouched by humans.

Not that long ago research was done on the brains of deceased humans to look for plastic content. The research, conducted by Professor Matthew Campen, University of New Mexico, revealed that the plastic content of their brains was found to be 0.5% on average for each individual. -That’s the equivalent of a plastic spoon weighing 5g. Hence the above image showing a plastic spoon pasted on the brain.

The 0.5% result was a 50% increase on comparing average brain plastic content in 2016. 

-This disturbing evidence suggests that we are facing an inevitable, unstoppable generational increase in body plastic toxicity. Not just in our brains, but an invasion of microplastics in other areas of our bodies, including other vital organs such the liver, kidneys and heart…

So named the ’silent invasion’ because the microplastics, tiny shards the size of 200 nanometers (0.0002 millimeters) or even smaller, such as nano-plastics (1 billionth of a meter), are too small to be detected by the naked eye. These pollutants are present in the air, land and water.  

When ingested or inhaled, they enter our bodies bypassing natural immune defenses, unable to be broken down when in the body. 

Bisphenol-A or phthalates are examples of the toxic ingredients that accumulate, having the ability to affect body pH, and mimic or block hormones: The consequences of hormonal disruptions include infertility, pregnancy complications, cognitive impairment and oxidative stress (leading to cell damage) through  imbalances… 

Further, besides affecting the body’s organs they are able to clog up arteries and veins, leading to cardiovascular illnesses.

As microplastics are present in oceans, soil and reservoirs where our drinking water and food comes from, they have become hotbeds for antibiotic resistant superbugs. 

A Boston University study showed that E. Coli bacteria became 5 times more resistant to over several different antibiotics when in a microplastics environment. This disturbing link between microplastic toxicity and increasing antibiotic-resistant superbugs should sound alarm bells ringing. 

Consider the implications. For example, consider wastewater (effluent) treatment. This now has superbugs in a microplastic environment that poses a public health threat when released back into the environment if not treated properly. What about the areas where there are poor people and there is a lack of sanitation…?  

-In short, the microplastics silent invasion has become a world-wide health emergency threatening both humans and wildlife in the environment.

However, there are a number of necessary precautionary measures we can take to protect ourselves. 

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The Free Market Approach to Environmental Conservation

When Terry Anderson and Donald Leal published the first edition of their book Free Market Environmentalism in 1991, the idea was met with mixed reviews. “Free market environmentalism is an oxymoron,” wrote one reviewer, “and the authors are the moron part.”

The dominant belief at the time was that markets are the cause of environmental degradation, not the solution. And the idea that property rights could be harnessed to improve environmental quality was counter to the popular notion that conserving natural landscapes required regulation and management by government agencies.

But not anymore. Today, the ideas of free market environmentalism are being applied in a variety of creative ways. Conservationists are increasingly using markets, contracts, and property rights to turn environmental resources into assets instead of liabilities. And policymakers are recognizing that markets are not the enemy of the environment but instead can provide strong incentives for resource stewardship.

So how are these ideas being applied today to change the way people approach conservation? Here are a few examples.

Markets and Property Rights Are Solving the Tragedy of the Commons in Marine Fisheries…

Ocean fisheries are a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Since no one owns the ocean, no one has a clear incentive to conserve its resources, making the oceans prone to overfishing. 

For decades, governments have imposed command-and-control regulations to combat overfishing, but such restrictions have rarely worked. Shortened seasons and early closures created a dangerous, zero-sum “race to fish.” The outcome was a wasteful—and often deadly—derby that was bad for both fish and fishermen, who tried to catch as much as possible before the closures set in. Despite these regulations, overfishing persisted, and many fish stocks were at risk of collapsing.

That changed with the development of a rights-based alternative known as individual transferable quotas, sometimes called “catch shares.” The quotas give fishermen the right to catch a share of a total catch limit, set at a sustainable level each season by fishery managers. Fishermen can buy, sell, or lease quotas to each other, and they no longer have to race to fish. There is also more accountability for harvests and an incentive for stewardship.

The results have been impressive. Rights-based fishing reforms have reduced overfishing, helped stem the global trend toward fisheries collapse, and led to higher incomes for fishers. According to one study that examined data on more than 11,000 fisheries around the world, catch shares have helped halt and even reverse the collapse of fisheries. They have also slowed the “race to fish,” improving fishing safety and allowing consumers to buy fresh seafood throughout the year. Today, there are nearly 200 catch-share programs worldwide, including more than a dozen in the United States. 

Catch shares are also being used to reduce “bycatch,” which are species that fishermen unintentionally catch in their trawlers. After previous efforts to regulate bycatch failed, managers of a fishery off the West Coast of the United States demonstrated how markets and property rights can help tackle the problem. 

In 2011, the West Coast groundfish fishery instituted a program that gave each fisherman a portfolio of rights to catch various species, including those caught as bycatch. If a fisherman exceeded his allotment for a given type of fish, he had to purchase more quota—and when it came to overfished species, the price was steep. This gave each vessel in the fleet ample incentive to avoid overfished species that previously ended up as bycatch, a crucial aspect of the program that former regulations on fishing seasons lacked.

After catch shares were introduced, the proportion of overfished species caught by trawlers fell by about half. “Before catch shares, large proportions of the catch of many non-target species were discarded as bycatch,” reads a 2015 government report. “Now, whether in a fishing net or in the ocean, they are treated as the valuable resource they are.” As a result, populations of overfished species have begun to rebound thanks to clearly defined property rights and markets that overcome the tragedy of the commons.

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